Food, Wine, and Sandboarding; A Nice Way to End the Trip
Our trip is coming to an end as we disembark from our short bus ride from Santiago to the port city of Valparaiso. The city is the second largest metropolis in the country and home to numerous universities, a major port, and the Chilean Congress.
The city is divided into the flat area and the hills; where most of the businesses and infrastructure are in the flat area, and most of the population lives in the hills. The most picturesque and touristy areas are the cobblestoned historic neighborhoods of Alegre Hill and Concepcion Hill.
The city gained UNESCO World Heritage status in 2003 based on its unique architecture and its improvised urban plan. Part of what makes Valparaiso unique and interesting is that it (a) has the oldest original trolly cars still in service in the world and (b) due to the majority of hill areas being inaccessible by public transportation, it contains a series of funiculars that convey people from the flat area to part way up the hills. At one point there were 28 different funiculars in operation, but now there are only 15 still functioning and only 6-8 working at any one time. Over our two and a half days in the city, Em and I rode in the two oldest of these (the oldest having been built in 1883) and also in the only one that was actually an elevator (as opposed to a pulley system).
Em had originally booked us into a hostel in the automotive section of the flat area. When we tried to check-in early to drop our bags off, the door was locked and no one was around. Not liking the area so much and being fearful that if the hostel closed randomly during certain times of the day we wouldn't be able to get our bags on our last day, I decided that we would be finding somewhere else to stay.
We meandered for a while until we encountered a cute tea and sandwich shop where we had a great lunch, I got chai for the first time in weeks, and there was wifi, through which we located an adorable B&B on Allegra Hill in the heart of the historic area. It turned out that the B&B was run by a husband and wife team, who lived there with their identical twin 2.5 year old daughters and that we were the only guests. The husband component of the team, Rene, was our main point of contact. He was very knowledgeable about the area and an avid amateur photographer.
I had been interested in trying some authentic Chilean food and so we had booked a Chilean Cooking class for our first night in the city. The class consisted of meeting at a small coffee shop on the side of Sotomeyer Square and discussing all the options for what we could make for dinner; taking a city trolly car to the local market to buy the ingredients, and then returning to the cooking school to prepare and consume everything.
The day we participated, there were five other fellow want to be chefs: a French couple, a British Couple, and a Bostonian. Due to the Bostonian being a vegetarian and a huge fire on New Year's that had burned many of the fishermens' homes high up in the hills (meaning they were dealing with that and not fishing), dinner was a vegetarian affair (except for the meat empanada that two of the participants made). Our menu for the evening consisted of an appetizer of hearts of palm stuffed avocado served with Pisco Sour; an eggplant, raisin, olive, and egg empanada served with white wine; a squash, potato, green bean, corn, onion, and carrot stew served with red wine; and the Chilean version of flan for desert. Everything was also accompanied by a homemade salsa. The entire evening was fun and all our fellow cooks provided lively conversation.
The next morning, after a very satisfying breakfast (a perk of a B&B), we meandered back to Sotomeyer Square to meet up with the Green Bicycle group for a wine and bike tour of the Kingston Family Vineyards in Casablanca. We had convinced Amber (the Bostonian from the previous day) and the British couple to come with us, but it appeared that the tour had a higher than usual number of pre-registrations and they weren't accepting walk ons. So Amber and the Brits commandeered their own taxi to tour the wineries, and Em and I continued with the tour.
The tour takes you to the Kingston Family Vineyards about 30 miles outside the city. There you grab a helmet and a mountain bike and spend and hour and a half biking through the the vineyards while the guide periodically stops to explain something of the area, winery, and or processes used. During the tour, you get to try an airy and light Sauvignon Blanc in the vineyard, before returning to the main facility to sample a Pinot Noir and two consecutive years of the Syrah. I liked the Sauvignon and the Pinot, but both Syrahs were terrible.
The winery began as a dairy farm in the early 1900s and didn't start looking at wine production until 1998, when one of the original founder's decendents came back with a degree from Stanford and decided to attempt making red wine in a region previously only known for white wine. While everyone scoffed at the notion of red wine in this area, but it's the Kingston Family that is laughing now, as their Syrahs and Pinot Noirs are world renowned.
While on the bike tour, Em and I made the acquaintence of Carol, a fellow resident of Los Angeles, who told us she was going to the Atacama Desert to sandboard. The bike guide overheard our conversation and told us that there was a location about 30 minutes from Valparaiso where we could do that. Armed with this information, Carol, Em, and I headed back to Valparaiso to catch a small intercity minibus to the sand dunes at Concon.
The two sand dunes are all that is left of the original habitat of this area and are estimated to be 25 million years old. The dunes are also unique in that they are comprised of a series of sandhills that hang out over sea terraces, separated by a rocky outcrop. Everything on either side of the dunes is built up and sadly within the next 10-20 years, the little bit of desert still present, will also make way for industry and humanity.
At the upper edge (the inland side), you can rent a homemade sandboard (looks like a small snowboard and has two pieces of cloth stapled to it to make loops to attach your feet) or a sled board (you sit on it and slide down the dunes). Carol, Em, and I rented two sandboards and one sled and then proceeded to spend the next hour running up the dunes and boarding down them. Em turned out to be the best at the boarding and I spent a lot of time falling down in the sand to the amusement of the other two (luckily it's a hell of a lot softer than snow). The excursion ended up being a lot of fun and I'm glad that we met Carol and that our bike tour guide was ease-dropping or we may never have had the opportunity to try it.
We started our last day in Valparaiso, and in Chile as a whole, with an off the beaten path walking tour. The "Where's Waldo" company, called Wally's, offers two free (you tip what you like) walking tours per day. The tour that we were on took us through some of the touristy areas, but they sort skirt around most of them and go into some of the less traveled areas. The tour also focused a little bit more on the political history of the city (not all of which was filtered through Rose tinted glasses). I like these tours because they a great way to know the city that you're visiting and because everytime you take one, it's a little different than the last, as the tours are colored and shaped by their guides.
After the tour, we had one last lunch, grabbed our bags and took a roller coaster (aka bus) around the curving hills back to the main bus terminal. We arrived at the terminal a few hours before our bus back to Santiago and therefore set out to visit the only funicular in the city that was actually an elevator. Someone else had told me that they had had a graffiti expo/competition in the city the previous year and that around the tower were over 60 pieces down by artists from around the world.
To access the elevator, one pays their $0.18 admission and walks down a 100 meter underground tunnel. The tower has three floors and zero graffiti and so I was super confused when we got there. There were however multiple murals on the sides of the buildings in the neighborhood where the tower was located so we wandered around those for a bit.
A while later, we caught our bus to Santiago and an additional one to the airport and began our long trip home (mine made even longer by weather delays in the Bay Area affecting flights around the rest of the country).
Until the next grand adventure...
The city is divided into the flat area and the hills; where most of the businesses and infrastructure are in the flat area, and most of the population lives in the hills. The most picturesque and touristy areas are the cobblestoned historic neighborhoods of Alegre Hill and Concepcion Hill.
The city gained UNESCO World Heritage status in 2003 based on its unique architecture and its improvised urban plan. Part of what makes Valparaiso unique and interesting is that it (a) has the oldest original trolly cars still in service in the world and (b) due to the majority of hill areas being inaccessible by public transportation, it contains a series of funiculars that convey people from the flat area to part way up the hills. At one point there were 28 different funiculars in operation, but now there are only 15 still functioning and only 6-8 working at any one time. Over our two and a half days in the city, Em and I rode in the two oldest of these (the oldest having been built in 1883) and also in the only one that was actually an elevator (as opposed to a pulley system).
Em had originally booked us into a hostel in the automotive section of the flat area. When we tried to check-in early to drop our bags off, the door was locked and no one was around. Not liking the area so much and being fearful that if the hostel closed randomly during certain times of the day we wouldn't be able to get our bags on our last day, I decided that we would be finding somewhere else to stay.
We meandered for a while until we encountered a cute tea and sandwich shop where we had a great lunch, I got chai for the first time in weeks, and there was wifi, through which we located an adorable B&B on Allegra Hill in the heart of the historic area. It turned out that the B&B was run by a husband and wife team, who lived there with their identical twin 2.5 year old daughters and that we were the only guests. The husband component of the team, Rene, was our main point of contact. He was very knowledgeable about the area and an avid amateur photographer.
I had been interested in trying some authentic Chilean food and so we had booked a Chilean Cooking class for our first night in the city. The class consisted of meeting at a small coffee shop on the side of Sotomeyer Square and discussing all the options for what we could make for dinner; taking a city trolly car to the local market to buy the ingredients, and then returning to the cooking school to prepare and consume everything.
The day we participated, there were five other fellow want to be chefs: a French couple, a British Couple, and a Bostonian. Due to the Bostonian being a vegetarian and a huge fire on New Year's that had burned many of the fishermens' homes high up in the hills (meaning they were dealing with that and not fishing), dinner was a vegetarian affair (except for the meat empanada that two of the participants made). Our menu for the evening consisted of an appetizer of hearts of palm stuffed avocado served with Pisco Sour; an eggplant, raisin, olive, and egg empanada served with white wine; a squash, potato, green bean, corn, onion, and carrot stew served with red wine; and the Chilean version of flan for desert. Everything was also accompanied by a homemade salsa. The entire evening was fun and all our fellow cooks provided lively conversation.
The next morning, after a very satisfying breakfast (a perk of a B&B), we meandered back to Sotomeyer Square to meet up with the Green Bicycle group for a wine and bike tour of the Kingston Family Vineyards in Casablanca. We had convinced Amber (the Bostonian from the previous day) and the British couple to come with us, but it appeared that the tour had a higher than usual number of pre-registrations and they weren't accepting walk ons. So Amber and the Brits commandeered their own taxi to tour the wineries, and Em and I continued with the tour.
The tour takes you to the Kingston Family Vineyards about 30 miles outside the city. There you grab a helmet and a mountain bike and spend and hour and a half biking through the the vineyards while the guide periodically stops to explain something of the area, winery, and or processes used. During the tour, you get to try an airy and light Sauvignon Blanc in the vineyard, before returning to the main facility to sample a Pinot Noir and two consecutive years of the Syrah. I liked the Sauvignon and the Pinot, but both Syrahs were terrible.
The winery began as a dairy farm in the early 1900s and didn't start looking at wine production until 1998, when one of the original founder's decendents came back with a degree from Stanford and decided to attempt making red wine in a region previously only known for white wine. While everyone scoffed at the notion of red wine in this area, but it's the Kingston Family that is laughing now, as their Syrahs and Pinot Noirs are world renowned.
While on the bike tour, Em and I made the acquaintence of Carol, a fellow resident of Los Angeles, who told us she was going to the Atacama Desert to sandboard. The bike guide overheard our conversation and told us that there was a location about 30 minutes from Valparaiso where we could do that. Armed with this information, Carol, Em, and I headed back to Valparaiso to catch a small intercity minibus to the sand dunes at Concon.
The two sand dunes are all that is left of the original habitat of this area and are estimated to be 25 million years old. The dunes are also unique in that they are comprised of a series of sandhills that hang out over sea terraces, separated by a rocky outcrop. Everything on either side of the dunes is built up and sadly within the next 10-20 years, the little bit of desert still present, will also make way for industry and humanity.
At the upper edge (the inland side), you can rent a homemade sandboard (looks like a small snowboard and has two pieces of cloth stapled to it to make loops to attach your feet) or a sled board (you sit on it and slide down the dunes). Carol, Em, and I rented two sandboards and one sled and then proceeded to spend the next hour running up the dunes and boarding down them. Em turned out to be the best at the boarding and I spent a lot of time falling down in the sand to the amusement of the other two (luckily it's a hell of a lot softer than snow). The excursion ended up being a lot of fun and I'm glad that we met Carol and that our bike tour guide was ease-dropping or we may never have had the opportunity to try it.
We started our last day in Valparaiso, and in Chile as a whole, with an off the beaten path walking tour. The "Where's Waldo" company, called Wally's, offers two free (you tip what you like) walking tours per day. The tour that we were on took us through some of the touristy areas, but they sort skirt around most of them and go into some of the less traveled areas. The tour also focused a little bit more on the political history of the city (not all of which was filtered through Rose tinted glasses). I like these tours because they a great way to know the city that you're visiting and because everytime you take one, it's a little different than the last, as the tours are colored and shaped by their guides.
After the tour, we had one last lunch, grabbed our bags and took a roller coaster (aka bus) around the curving hills back to the main bus terminal. We arrived at the terminal a few hours before our bus back to Santiago and therefore set out to visit the only funicular in the city that was actually an elevator. Someone else had told me that they had had a graffiti expo/competition in the city the previous year and that around the tower were over 60 pieces down by artists from around the world.
To access the elevator, one pays their $0.18 admission and walks down a 100 meter underground tunnel. The tower has three floors and zero graffiti and so I was super confused when we got there. There were however multiple murals on the sides of the buildings in the neighborhood where the tower was located so we wandered around those for a bit.
A while later, we caught our bus to Santiago and an additional one to the airport and began our long trip home (mine made even longer by weather delays in the Bay Area affecting flights around the rest of the country).
Until the next grand adventure...
posted by Robby @ 9:18 AM
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